Reading time: about 4 minutes.
Two collective agreements, one payroll and a cost that does not appear on it
A beauty center is a small business, and its staff has to sustain the output it bills every month: the treatment-room hours sold, the first appointments handled and the follow-up afterwards.
Planning that staff means looking at two horizons at once: the people who handle today’s output and the people who will be needed to grow. The center is sized before growth arrives, not once it has arrived.
Social Security and salary costs deserve their own analysis, using the professional categories of the two applicable collective agreements (convenios colectivos): the one for hairdressing salons and beauty centers, and the one for private healthcare, which covers aesthetic medicine clinics. Each person’s role and the agreement that applies to it set what each treatment-room hour costs.
This article focuses on opportunity cost, which appears on no payroll and no invoice: it is the revenue the center could have made with the same clients, the same treatment rooms and the same hours.
From the point of view of the business model, beauty combines margin per treatment with schedule turnover, and that combination turns each treatment-room hour into income. What decides how much of it is converted are two capabilities of the team: aptitude, with a “p”, and attitude, with a “t”.
Aptitude with a p and attitude with a t: the training each one needs
Aptitudes are the concrete conditions of objective preparation that make a team “apt” for functions that require those specific conditions: operating a laser or radiofrequency device, for example, or knowing the cosmetic lines of the brands the center sells.
Attitude is a team’s capacity to contribute positively and give its best as an integral part of your project. Most of the time the team has not received the training that a proactive attitude requires, because that attitude is built through specific training that goes beyond motivation.
That training is concrete, specific, ethical and sustained over time, and it teaches the team to lead the conversation with the client: what to ask at the first appointment, how to explain a multi-session protocol and when to propose the treatment that complements the one the client has already booked. All of it through a dialogue that is empathetic, assertive, consistent and respectful, never aggressive.
The difference between the two capabilities sets the order of the training: an aptitude is covered by the device manufacturer’s technical course; an attitude, by ethical sales training that is repeated and measured.
The team’s two reactions in the first training session
In the first session of a sales training program, a team splits into two groups. One reacts defensively and protects its own insecurity in the face of the unknown. The other sees in that same unfamiliarity an opportunity for personal, professional and business growth.
Both groups can be identified in the first few hours, and the plan follows from that: the second group gets room to develop and responsibility for sales; the first gets support in short, repeated sessions until the conversation with the client no longer feels foreign. When a professional holds on to their position, the company considers replacing them.
Opportunity cost: between 30% and 80% of revenue
A beauty center employee trained in ethical sales brings in, on average, more than 50% in additional income, measured analytically against what the organization itself had projected before that training.
As a result, the revenue of a center that only “dispenses” beauty treatments carries an opportunity cost of between 30% and 80%. In euros: for every €100 that comes in today, there are between €30 and €80 that the same clients, the same treatment rooms and the same hours could already have generated.
This article has set out one of the reasons that revenue does not materialize: the lack of specific training in sales, the sales process, cross-selling, customer service and follow-up. That shortfall also leaves a negative attitude in the treatment room and a distance between the company’s goals and those of the team of beauty therapists.
Put a figure on it this month. Take the revenue of the last closed month, apply the 30% at the low end of the range and compare that amount with the cost of an ethical sales training program for your staff: the difference is the figure you decide with.
“If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.” Derek Bok, former president of Harvard University.
A team that sells ethically, trained role by role
Sales training moves revenue when it responds to what each role needs: the receptionist who confirms appointments, the person who recommends a treatment and the person who presents a quote.
Within our Growth line, our team of consultants trains clinic owners, managers and staff in ethical selling, with the data from your own schedule.
Since 1999 we have worked only with clinics and beauty centers, and we have advised 1,017 clinics.